On Saturday, September 15th, the Mesa Historical Museum, at 2345 N. Horne St, will be hosting a Meet Wallace event to herald the opening of their new exhibit, “Thanks for Tuning In: The Wallace and Ladmo Show”. Admission is only $5 for adults, $4 Seniors, $3 for kids 12 and under, and children under the age of 3 are free.

This fan site has all the information you need about this event, as well as interesting factoids about the longest-running same-cast kids’ show in television history. They even have rare photos to peruse, and I know I’ve spent a lot of enjoyable time there, reminiscing about the show. There’s also an interesting article about the true age of Pat McMahon, and it confirms exactly what I’ve thought all along.

So mark your calender for this event, and take your family out to enjoy a day with Wall-boy and friends.

By now, I’m sure that the entire world has heard about the two helicopters that crashed over a Phoenix park earlier today. I saw it all unfold live on the news, and I have a few things to say about it. Right now, I’ve got a couple of other posts I plan on writing about first. I’ll probably get my thoughts together and write about it later tonight.

For some reason, there always seems to be a lot of news stories coming from Arizona. Then again, maybe I just notice more because I live here, but it seems to be that the national news gives AZ more than its fair share of coverage.

I’m not complaining per se, but some of the stories make us all sound like loons. And when they’re not reporting on wacky people, they’re making it sound like our lives are in danger from the weather.

I have to say that I’ve seen more monsoons that I care to admit to publicly, and by and large, the vast majority of them are like any storm. Yeah, a helicopter captures a dramatic picture of a dust storm blowing in, but the view from the ground is much different. Come to think of it, I think my son took a picture of the recent dust storm that was mentioned on Drudge, so I may just hunt it down and do a side by side comparison.

I had heard of Luke Johnson, but I didn’t know he was a local guy until recently. Luke made a video of himself and put it on YouTube. In the video, he shows his phone number, 602-435-3694, and asks everyone to call him. He’s been featured on national and international news shows, and has received calls from all over the world, including China.

If you’re reading this and haven’t called him, he promised to answer day or night. So, what are you waiting for? Give him a call, and then post a comment here and let me know what he said.

Despite common sentiment, there is a lot of variety to the weather here in Arizona and I would love to dispel the rumors that the seasons here are nicknamed “hot, really hot, super hot, and inferno”.

I think that I may have found the perfect venue to talk about our local climate. I just need to enter the weather video challenge . I could become famous by showcasing my weather forecasting talents. If I win, I might even be considered some sort of weather guru by my friends and neighbors. If I don’t want to record myself, I could make a forecast with a mash up of some of their videos and use that to display my creativity and knowledge of my local climate.

I could talk about the rainy monsoon season, and explain that Arizona isn’t always a “dry heat” and that we do get our fair share of summer humidity. I also think everyone would be surprised to find out that there’s enough snow in northern Arizona during the winter to support a thriving skiing industry. I would be thrilled to prove to the skeptics that we do experience a variety of precipitation here.

Then again, I could talk what it was like in Phoenix on June 26, 1990. That was the day the official thermometer reached its highest recorded temperature of 122 degrees and I was here to survive experience it. (That’s 50 in Celsius, if anyone’s wondering.) Come to think of it, maybe the most accurate way to describe that day is “inferno”, because it was it was indescribably hot. Thankfully, it doesn’t get that hot every year, and our average high temperature is only 107 F. Summer nights are usually in the 80s, which is practically sweater weather around here.

The Heard museum, world renowned for highlighting the history and arts of tribes, decided to end its use of “Native Americans” when referring to tribes and will use the term “American Indian”. Jake James, a Phoenix resident who is Hopi/Gila River, is OK with American Indian because it “designates the Indian population of the United States,” said James, who is an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Community.
“For clarification, it’s a good step in the right direction. I just hope that in the future we would be called Americans,” James said.

However, there is not a united consensus for this decision and some legal scholars see today’s debate as a trend among tribes to find a correct name.

I can not believe the number of children in the metro Phoenix area that have died in the past few days. Do people/parents not realize that they need to keep eye to eye contact with their little ones at all times? These are senseless and needless tragic deaths.

Please please please ALWAYS watch your kids around water, whether its a swimming pool, bath tub or a bucket of water.